sci fi

Dan Bloom, Editor of The Cli-Fi Report, reviews “Three Days Till EOC” by Abhi Sukhdial

Stone Soup Editor’s note: We sent a copy of  Three Days Till EOC by Abhimanyu Sukhdial, the winner of our 2019 book contest published in September 2020, to the (grand)father of cli-fi, Dan Bloom, in Taiwan. He wrote us a wonderful letter of recommendation which he has given us permission to publish on our website, since his own, cli-fi.net, is not currently being updated. SCI FI NOVELLA by 12 year old boy in Oklahoma gets rave review from 71-year-old book reviewer in Taiwan In a new 66-page science/climate fiction novella by a 12-year-old boy named Abhimanyu Sukhdial from Oklahoma, titled Three Days Till EOC, time is running out. “It is the year 2100 and water, the thing that matters to all life, is wiping out life itself. The ice sheets have melted, the Earth has passed its last cataclysmic tipping point, and now there are only three days until the ‘End of Civilization,'” as the notes on the back cover of this well-designed and easy-to-read novella tell us. “Climate scientist Graham Alison, one of the last 1,000 humans left on Earth, is racing against the odds to save the world before the last rescue shuttle leaves for the Mars colonies. Will he manage to persuade the leaders of the past to change their behavior so that the present can be different? Or will it be precious networks of family relationships across time and space that actually save humanity?” The publishers, Children’s Art Foundation–Stone Soup Inc., sent me a copy of his book by air-mail and although it took two months to arrive at my home in Taiwan during this global pandemic, it finally arrived last week and I immediately sat down to start reading it. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t put the book down. It’s that’s good. It’s amazing that a 12-year-old boy in America could write such a well-plotted sci-fi story and get it published. You can order it via Amazon and other book ordering sites online. This is a science fiction book set in the future–some call it dystopian, although Abhi feels that such a label limits it to just a particular sub-genre. Among the people in the book: We meet the main character Graham Hart Alison and a cast of characters, including the first Indian-American U.S. president, Mr. Ram Singh who is in office in 2052. Teens and sci-fi geeks will love it, and so will YA readers and adults, too. Famous sci-fi writers like David Brin or Kim Stanley Robinson might even enjoy reading this book. It’s a novella that combines “science fiction” with “climate fiction” and I at the age of 71-going-on-72 enjoyed every single page. This is a young writer to watch! Signed – Dan Bloom, editor, The Cli-Fi Report www.cli-fi.net

“Calamity 023,” a short story by Marco Lu, 13

Jack waited at the conveyer belt, Waiting, Waiting, Waiting…  AAAaaaAAAaaaAAAaaa WARNING! WARNING! The signal for a fire! Jack leapt to his feet and ran but found himself at a dead end. There was a single door. Jack ran to it, banged it, pulled it, kicked it, and even tried to smash it open! After deciding that trying to force it open was useless, he noticed an electronic keypad, and a sign that said: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Jack saw a PLEASE ENTER CODE sign above the keypad. It was a five-digit code, but had letters as well as numbers. He looked back. The fire was already choking the corridor behind him. Suddenly, all the lights went out. An electric shortage! Which meant… He glanced at the door. They had popped open! Jack sprinted inside. Suddenly a voice appeared from nowhere, and a strange one too! It wasn’t the generic calm, female voice. It was a low, robotic voice. Jack jumped, and a robot appeared. It was exactly the robot you would expect The Voice, as Jack called it, to come from. It was pure black, with a skeletal body, four legs, and a hunched back. A single red eye glowed at the top of the back, with a yellow pupil in it roving to search the breached room. It scuttled toward Jack, and raised a clawed hand with a thin finger pointing at Jack. With a start, Jack realized that it wasn’t a robot at all, but a cyborg, or cybernetic organism. Almost a robot, but not quite, as a brain was cradled visibly at the base of its hunched back. Wires stuck into the brain, and one visibly tensed as it delivered news of Jack’s presence in the room. The Voice came again-but not from the cyborg! It seemed to come from the walls of the room, and resonated over and over in this way, the robot-that is, cyborg- introduced itself as Captain Gerard Djedler of the LabRats (NeuroTech). Jack learned that he was in the primary meeting hall of the top-secret LabRats, who created new technology for DreaMachine Inc. Jack worked for DreaMachine as well, but he got off on weekends, and, as an engineer, made sure everything worked. He had brown hair and green eyes. He was 6 foot 5 inches, and had a small house in Ouyrettebo d’tikciuq. The LabRats stayed in the lab for years on end, pumping out new technology to increase the efficiency of DreaMachine. However important the LabRats were, robots were the backbone of DreaMachine. Arms cranked, presses whirred, pumps hissed in a maelstrom of sound. Jack would wear noise-cancellation earphones to block out the whirlwind of blips, hisses and whirrs. On the table, there was a DreamSet, a device that allowed you to program your own dreams. A shelf held a box saying: WARNING DO NOT OPEN. On the wall there hung a diagram of the brain, and books like Thinking: Fast and Slow and How We Decide were held open by spider-like robots that scuttled to you and gave you a book. Suddenly, the door slid closed with a whroom. Jack looked around, and was suddenly blinded as the lights flickered back on. The electricity came on, and Jack tried to call his wife. However, a large sign appeared saying ACCESS DENIED. Jack swore, but regained his composure as a section of the wall slid open. Interested, he followed Gerard into the door. Jack screamed. Large canisters lay suspended from the ceiling, but that wasn’t remotely scary. What scared him was what was in them… Brains were hanging in them, swaying limply in the embrace of wires. Gerard (or Cap’n Djedler) gestured around. Despite Jack’s impulsive shriek of terror, The Voice proclaimed proudly that these were the brains of the finest LabRats, feeding information directly to people’s minds. It was rather like the Siri of the olden days (back in good ol’ 2015), and Jack couldn’t help but be impressed by it, even though he was repulsed. Computer banks lined the walls, so that the signals from the brains would not have to travel far. If signals traveled too far, they would get all muddled up. Then, he was ushered into a pod. The walls around him warped and blurred, and everything went black. The next morning, he woke up in a recliner, without any recount of what had happened after the fire. He heard his wife calling him for breakfast. He walked over, and dug into his plate of czinn (deglutiat piscis). Jack’s pet europa gar was swimming in his HydroSphere, which at that moment dispensed a wad of food into the sphere. A flash! A boom! And all the lights went out! Jack reminded his wife that electric storms were not altogether uncommon, due to the high amounts of Teslic energy generators. Teslic energy generators were common because electric energy was very useful. It was used to power the HyperTrain network, NeuroPhones, Mechoids, even the expensive CloudCraft. CloudCraft were massive floating “hives”, flying around and offering their aristocratic owners a different vacation each day. They were arranged in intricate systems, but a NavCom allowed you to get to different rooms easily. The next day… lights had still not powered up. A week later… still no power. Clearly, this was no ordinary electric storm.  Jack went to DreaMachine HQ to help with the problem, leaving a note saying “We’re going to see the electric generator regulations”. They held a conference to decide what to do. They decided to check on the regulations of the tesla generators. They all left except for Jack (he wasn’t important enough) and a young woman who introduced herself as Lily Djedler. Ahhh, that’s what she was doing here. Of course, the daughter of the LabRats captain would be allowed here. Suddenly she pulled out a piece of paper and scrawled: Finally gone. DreamSets are brainwashing. Get. Out. NOW!  Then Lily got up, turned, and walked into a strange, almost ethereal swirling blue ellipse. When Jack